"66 is the mother road...." --John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath (1939)

Along the entire distance of Rt 66, this is the only installed street sign I've spotted with this famous name on it. It's on the west side of Chandler OK. Plenty of places have "Rt 66" "Route 66" "Old 66" or "Historic 66" but not "Mother Road."

Steinbeck's novel was made into a movie of the same name. Several of the filmed locations appear about the same today. And if you drive 66 across Oklahoma (especially in the west) you will frequently be on the original concrete pavement used by the Dust Bowl migrants chronicled in the book and movie.

In this photo, I have paired the unique Mother Road sign with a dusty workaday vehicle that seems to match Steinbeck's words:

"66 is the path of a people in flight, refugees from dust and shrinking land, from the thunder of tractors and shrinking ownership, from the desert's slow northward invasion, from the twisting winds that howl up out of Texas, from the floods that bring no richness to the land and steal what little richness is there. From all these the people are in flight....66 is the mother road, the road of flight."

(This image is on display at the Route 66 Interpretive Center, Chandler OK.)